Myopia
by Alory Shannon
Summary: What if Deidara needed his scope for more than just ranged fighting? Humour/Genfic with just a slight bit of crack. platonic!DeiTobi oneshot.


Deidara frowned as he squinted at the scope lying on the workbench in front of him. It was a surprisingly delicate piece of machinery, on the inside at least, and those inner workings were difficult to see, which made finding any difficulties, well…difficult.

He tilted the light over his workbench a bit in the hopes that better illumination would make it easier to see what the problem was.

No such luck.

The blonde nukenin heaved a long, weary sigh. Looked like he'd have to take the whole blasted thing apart. Again. Which also meant that he'd have to use…_those things._

He felt a sharp surge of irritation at the very thought, but he knew there was nothing for it, unless he wanted to go ask Kakuzu or maybe Konan for help again; Kakuzu would doubtless charge him for services rendered, which made him an almost instant no, and while Konan would do the job for free, there was something a little _off _about her, something that made Deidara uneasy. Plus, Pein didn't really like anyone contacting her more than they had to, jealous bastard.

Checking behind him out of habit, Deidara dug around in the drawer beside his knee for a moment, finally withdrawing a small, flatly oblong case. Grimacing, the blonde artist slipped the framed lenses onto his face and started tinkering with the scope once again, using the set of tiny tools he'd swiped out of Sasori's old workshop.

It was a little-known fact that Deidara's scope wasn't solely for use during combat; really the blonde needed his glasses to see at all well, but he was far too vain to wear them unless he was alone. He'd tried contacts, of course, but the feeling of _having something in his eyes_ had driven him crazy, and they dried out too fast when he was flying anyway; the scope was the perfect solution to both problems, except at certain times like the present, when it merely _wa_s the problem.

He'd cleaned it already—there'd been sand in the focusing mechanism, which had seemed a simple enough cause for the malfunction—but even after taking it apart bit by bit, painstakingly removing every single grain of sand, and then carefully putting it all back together again, the blasted thing _still_ refused to work.

Thoughtfully worrying his lower lip with his teeth and fervently wishing for a magnifying glass, he leaned closer to the little gadget…

…And nearly bit through his lip when without warning the door behind him suddenly slammed open.

"Hey Deidara-senpai! I—"

The blonde's head jerked up and around, blue eyes wide and startled, while Tobi came to an abrupt stop mid-stride and just stared, apparently shocked speechless (for once) by his senpai's appearance. Deidara whipped the offending accessory off his face, stuffing the spectacles into one of the workbench's many drawers in the time it took to blink once, but it was already far too late.

"I didn't know you wore glasses, Deidara-senpai!" Tobi had crossed the room in a heartbeat, and was pulling the drawer open before the blonde artist knew what he was about.

Deidara had been having a bad day already. He was having some difficulty with the concept design of one of his sculptures, which was frustrating enough, but they'd been out of orange juice at breakfast (or near enough to it: he'd walked into the kitchen just in time to watch a blood-spattered Hidan take a drink straight from the carton, and he wasn't putting _any_ of his mouths on anything that had touched that religious fanatic's lips--who knew who or what that quite possibly disease-ridden blood had come from?), and then after breakfast, he'd been put on dishwashing duty with _Itachi _of all people; with his scope's malfunction on top of it all, his bag of patience was growing decidedly strained.

The former Iwa nin brought his foot up sharply, slamming the drawer closed once again and nearly catching Tobi's fingers in the process. "That's because I_ don't,_ yeah," he growled, warning blatantly obvious in both his glare and his tone of voice.

Apparently not obvious enough for Tobi, however.

"But you were just now! I saw you!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Deidara said stubbornly, turning most of his attention back to the scope in front of him but keeping half an eye on the drawer containing his glasses, on the off chance Tobi decided to try to go for them again.

The dark-haired shinobi gave a little chuckle, tucking his hands behind him and leaning back against the workbench. "You don't have to be embarrassed--I think they look nice, senpai!"

A ripple of tension went through the blonde's shoulders at that, causing the hand holding the tiny screwdriver to twitch just a bit and earning him a pricked pointer finger. "Who's embarrassed, huh?" he demanded between sucking on the digit and then peering at it closely to inspect the damage.

He caught the sudden flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, but too late--Tobi, who must've been waiting for just such an opening, was already turning the spectacles over carefully in his hands. The blonde glowered at him as the masked shinobi held them up, framing Deidara's face with the glasses from several feet away, allowing himself another view of how the spectacles looked on his senpai. "If they bother you that much, you should try a different style--maybe you'd like them better then. These cover up too much of your face."

Deidara's scowl only deepened as he lurched sideways, snatching the glasses away and shoving them back onto his face (and nearly poking out his left eye as he did so). "Ha, _that's_ rich, coming from someone who wears a mask all the time, yeah."

He instantly regretted saying anything about that. He knew the idiot would probably just play dumb, and Deidara didn't have to the patience for another of Tobi's little games today (not that he ever did, really).

Luckily Tobi didn't even seem to register the insult. "What's the matter with your scope, senpai?" he asked instead, moving closer to peer over Deidara's shoulder at the troublesome piece of equipment. "You've been in here for hours…you must have REALLY messed it up this time if it's taking you so long to fix it."

"I'm just not so good with delicate machinery like this, yeah?" the former Iwa nin admitted grudgingly, scooting his chair and the scope down the bench a bit in an attempt to put some space between Tobi and himself. "Danna was. He used to fix my scope for me all the time…"

"Ah, you mean Sasori-san, right? You sure talk about him a lot--you must miss him pretty badly, huh, Deidara-senpai?"

Deidara took half a moment to fondly consider a few of the many various ways he'd like to mangle Tobi if he ever got the chance before snapping out, _"Miss_ him? What would I miss that short-tempered bastard for? He never appreciated my art--I'm _glad_ he's gone, yeah!" The words had come just a little too quickly, and they rang false even in his own ears; regardless, he had to clench his jaw to keep from adding to them, which he knew could only make it worse, make the lie more obvious.

Tobi's only response was a thoughtful little hum, however, which just served to make Deidara more uncomfortable; after a moment of nervous fidgeting, the explosives specialist turned his full attention back to the problem at hand: the scope.

Tobi just stood there a little ways behind him, mutely watching Deidara grow increasingly irritated with the little device, an air of something like detached amusement about his masked figure.

"You've been working on that for a long time now, right?" he said quietly after nearly ten minutes had passed in silence; the blonde artist started a bit at the sudden question; he'd been so absorbed in his work, he'd forgotten that Tobi was even there. "You should let somebody else take a look."

And before Deidara could utter a word of protest, his partner had slipped up beside him and grabbed the scope off the workbench.

"What are you--give that back!"

The masked shinobi skipped backwards, evading a swipe from his senior that quite likely would've knocked his mask clean off had it connected, as the excess momentum from the unsuccessful attack sent both the chair and its blonde occupant tumbling sideways with a crash and an indignant screech of fury.

Tobi peered closely at the little device in his gloved hands, tilting his head slightly to give himself a better look as Deidara swore, untangled himself from his chair, and lunged at his partner, who nimbly avoided him yet again. "If you break that, dumbass, you are gonna be in SO much trouble, yeah! In fact, I'm assigning you a cause of death right now: death by—"

"Aha!"

_Snap._

Deidara's stomach lurched at the sound, his expression turning murderous, but Tobi didn't seem to notice; he crossed the space between them in a single bound, holding out the scope with undisguised eagerness.

"Try it now, senpai!"

Deidara blinked, staring at the other Akatsuki member for a long moment before snatching the scope from his outstretched hands to peer at it half-suspiciously. He'd almost expected it to be noticeably broken, but it certainly _looked_ intact, though that didn't necessarily mean it wouldn't blow up in his face. Still, there was really only one way to find out.

With a snort and a half-careless little shrug, he removed his spectacles, settling the scope over his left cheekbone and hitting a button with his thumb; with a quiet hiss of displaced air, the scope suctioned itself to his face, the slow shift in pressure familiar and strangely comforting in its minor, temporary unpleasantness. He hit another button to turn the whole thing on, smirked a bit to himself (like that little twit had actually managed to fix a problem that he'd been working on for _hours _in the space of a few seconds), then opened his eye.

...It was perfect.

He stared through it, utterly bemused, for nearly a whole minute, then slowly raised a hand to readjust the focal length, turning his gaze out the room's single tiny window.

_Click._

100 metres. Perfect.

_Click._

200 metres. Perfect.

_Click._

500 metres, and _still_ _perfect, goddamn it—_

_Clickclickclickclickclick—_

Abruptly he stopped, jerking around to pin Tobi with an incredulous stare, shock and consternation clear on his face and easily evident in his visible blue eye.

_How in the hell did…?_

"How is it, senpai?" Tobi asked, bobbing happily in place. "It works now, right? I did a good job, didn't I? Didn't I? Huh?"

Deidara couldn't _see_ the smirk on the masked shinobi's face, of course, but he could certainly hear it in his voice, and his visible eye narrowed in annoyance once more.

"It's fine, yeah," he mumbled grudgingly. "Not _great,_ but…it's good enough for now, I guess."

"Yes!" Tobi punched his fists towards the ceiling and gave an exultant little hop. "I'm awesome, aren't I, Deidara-senpai? I fixed your scope for you, and you couldn't figure out what was wrong at all even though it was really simple! And I've never even touched it before! That's pretty impressive, isn't it?"

"It's not all _that_ impressive," Deidara said stiffly, setting his chair upright and dropping down into it with a faint huff, arms crossed tightly over his chest. "It was a simple oversight on my part, yeah." He glared over his shoulder at the taller nin, growing visibly more agitated as he went on, "And _I'm_ the one who took the whole thing apart and put it back together--now _that's_ impressive, yeah! It was just dumb luck that you managed to fix it at all!"

"Whatever you say, senpai."

There was a smile in the masked nin's voice again, but this one gave Deidara pause, the animosity in his glare shifting into suspicion and uncertainty. Eyes narrowing slightly, he looked at Tobi sideways out of the corner of his right eye, unsettled by that strange tone that he couldn't quite place.

"Go away, yeah," he muttered at last, abruptly turning his face away from the other shinobi and reaching for one of the many lumps of clay scattered across his workbench. Almost automatically he started molding a bird, expecting his partner to need some added incentive to leave the room, but instead—

"Okay," Tobi said simply, turning and padding out of the room in an unusually subdued manner, the heavy wooden door creaking on its hinges as he pulled it closed after him. There was maybe an inch more to go before Deidara would be left in blissful silence once again when the door suddenly reversed direction, swinging open just wide enough for Tobi to poke his head back in. "Oh! Just wait'll I tell everyone how sophisticated you look wearing your glasses, Deidara-senpai!"

The blonde's jaw dropped in horror, his fist clenching around the tiny bird in his palm, returning it to a shapeless mass of clay as Tobi hurriedly closed the door--Deidara was _sure_ he'd heard the little bastard stifling a laugh--and beat a hasty retreat.

…Oh, _hell_ no.

Deidara nearly overturned his workbench, sculptures and all, in his haste to catch and maim his partner.

"GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE SKAG! _TOBIIIII!"_


End file.
